Nothing of the drama's revitalization via cancer would have come as any surprise to veterans of "thirtysomething," Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz's long-running, long-ago creation, in which a lead character endured a bout with ovarian cancer that would make national news.

What TV needs now, in these uncertain times, is dramatic characters like those of Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick ( "Once and Again," "thirtysomething") or on "Brothers and Sisters" — characters who aren't trying to save the world or plunder it, but are just trying to subsist in it.